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Fast Moving Clouds and Lake Rise
Jul. 16th, 2026 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yourlibrarian posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
common_nature
Another sunset which caught our attention, not just because of the developing color, but because of the speed at which the small clouds were moving. The 2 strands of clouds over to the right hardly seemed to move at all. But we could see the small puffs speeding by.
( Read more... )
umadoshiReading: One of the libraries I use suddenly acquired 91 more ebook copies of The Gate of the Feral Gods (DCC book 4), so I'm reading that. I also started Abra Berens' Ruffage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables.
Watching: We're halfway through Widow's Bay now and, I think, pretty invested.
Materialism: In the last couple of weeks I've tipped over into desperately wanting new jeans that, y'know, actually fit well. (The ones I've been wearing for ages are passable but just not great, and it relatively recently occurred to me that I can probably get away with wearing normal jeans with metal bits [to which I'm allergic] most of the time, since I'm rarely out of the house for very long. And while years ago, the "coat the skin-touching metal bits in clear nail polish" didn't actually work well, there's always the option of just plain sewing fabric bits over those spots.) Yesterday I spent a truly appalling amount of money ordering an array of jeans from a couple of different stores, most of which will be returned...but hopefully I can get a pair or two I actually like out of it.
Growing: The lettuce is still doing well! I think that's going well enough that we'll try it again next year and see how it does when the elevated planter is closer to the house (which it has to be after this season). I probably won't opt to grow spinach again; the plants are doing okay, but only three came up and they're not producing enough to Do Something With Spinach, so their leaves are just getting tossed into salads with the lettuce.
Meanwhile, the sole cucumber plant now seems to be serious about growing, and the tomatoes are flowering to varying degrees. Apparently we should go out and do a bit of hand pollination, and we really need to do a bit of pruning, at least on the three indeterminate plants.
Foodstuffs:scruloose made the Easy Swiss Chard Stir Fry from Omnivore's Cookbook to use the rainbow chard from our first week of farmshare, and if making it again, would increase both the garlic and soy sauce and also make it in the wok rather than the deep frying pan, which wasn't quite up to the mass of the chard greens. Sadly, I didn't like it much, which I suspect is a general chard thing rather than being due to this recipe. But we may try it again sometime.
Farmshare from last week (week 2): onions, new potatoes, strawberries, beets, parsley (flat?), and celeriac. This time the fridge wasn't straight-up exploding with greens. We still have to use the beets and celeriac, both of which are new to me; I think in both cases we're just planning to roast them and see what we think.
Having a car of our own means being able to just...get up and go to the produce stand we really like (which does sadly mean lower odds of making it to the corner farmers' market on Saturdays, but I'm hoping we'll still make it there during berry season). We went both Saturday and yesterday morning. The summer strawberries are just wrapping up (we tried four varieties through them over the last few weeks: Brunswick, Laurel, Jewel, and Evelyn), and yesterday we were able to also get our first raspberries and cherries of the season (both were sold out by the time we got to the front of the line on Saturday, which is a bit alarming given that we got there within half an hour of opening time). All of the remaining strawberries got roasted yesterday.
Watching: We're halfway through Widow's Bay now and, I think, pretty invested.
Materialism: In the last couple of weeks I've tipped over into desperately wanting new jeans that, y'know, actually fit well. (The ones I've been wearing for ages are passable but just not great, and it relatively recently occurred to me that I can probably get away with wearing normal jeans with metal bits [to which I'm allergic] most of the time, since I'm rarely out of the house for very long. And while years ago, the "coat the skin-touching metal bits in clear nail polish" didn't actually work well, there's always the option of just plain sewing fabric bits over those spots.) Yesterday I spent a truly appalling amount of money ordering an array of jeans from a couple of different stores, most of which will be returned...but hopefully I can get a pair or two I actually like out of it.
Growing: The lettuce is still doing well! I think that's going well enough that we'll try it again next year and see how it does when the elevated planter is closer to the house (which it has to be after this season). I probably won't opt to grow spinach again; the plants are doing okay, but only three came up and they're not producing enough to Do Something With Spinach, so their leaves are just getting tossed into salads with the lettuce.
Meanwhile, the sole cucumber plant now seems to be serious about growing, and the tomatoes are flowering to varying degrees. Apparently we should go out and do a bit of hand pollination, and we really need to do a bit of pruning, at least on the three indeterminate plants.
Foodstuffs:
scruloose made the Easy Swiss Chard Stir Fry from Omnivore's Cookbook to use the rainbow chard from our first week of farmshare, and if making it again, would increase both the garlic and soy sauce and also make it in the wok rather than the deep frying pan, which wasn't quite up to the mass of the chard greens. Sadly, I didn't like it much, which I suspect is a general chard thing rather than being due to this recipe. But we may try it again sometime.Farmshare from last week (week 2): onions, new potatoes, strawberries, beets, parsley (flat?), and celeriac. This time the fridge wasn't straight-up exploding with greens. We still have to use the beets and celeriac, both of which are new to me; I think in both cases we're just planning to roast them and see what we think.
Having a car of our own means being able to just...get up and go to the produce stand we really like (which does sadly mean lower odds of making it to the corner farmers' market on Saturdays, but I'm hoping we'll still make it there during berry season). We went both Saturday and yesterday morning. The summer strawberries are just wrapping up (we tried four varieties through them over the last few weeks: Brunswick, Laurel, Jewel, and Evelyn), and yesterday we were able to also get our first raspberries and cherries of the season (both were sold out by the time we got to the front of the line on Saturday, which is a bit alarming given that we got there within half an hour of opening time). All of the remaining strawberries got roasted yesterday.
2026 2nd Set of Ducklings
Jul. 9th, 2026 05:08 pmyourlibrarian posting in common_nature
We spotted a second set of ducklings on the lake! This was somewhat distressing at first because the babies were following mama to the retaining wall, which she flew up onto and they were stuck below.
( Read more... )
Weekly proof of life: reading, watching, weather, and a few new foods tried
Jul. 5th, 2026 03:35 pmumadoshiReading: I eked it out for fully half of the year, but a couple nights ago I finished reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, which was wonderful.
Watching:scruloose and I watched the first episode of Widow's Bay, and I sure hope I'm not supposed to find anyone likeable so far. ("Likeable characters" is not a requirement for me to enjoy a show, but it sure does help.) We know the new season of Silo has started up, so hopefully we'll get to the season premiere sometime this coming week.
Weathering: The heat wave seems to have broken here. It's still hot in the forecast, but much more reasonably so.
Eating: It was a couple weeks ago now, but we ordered from bb.q Chicken again with Kas and I need to report that the "Cheesling" chicken (which the website just describes as "Dusted in a rich medley of sweet cheeses", but I think the order link mentioned mascarpone and cheddar) and it was so good.
More recently, we tried haskap berries for the first time! This particular pint of them, at least, were a lot like significantly-tart blueberries; I don't feel a burning need to have them again when I could just get blueberries, but I enjoyed them.
Yesterday we bought a pint of Shaker Lemon ice cream made by a local creamery and ate it with the strawberries we brought home. (I had to look up what "Shaker Lemon" actually means, and the first hits I saw were all about pie, but I assume it's the same principle of "made with entire lemons, other than the seeds".) (Also, I know we had this ice cream once before, in a summer when we got both it and the lemon ice cream on offer from another local creamery, but all I could remember was that the two were very different, and this one was available, so we clearly had to retry it For Science.)
Watching:
scruloose and I watched the first episode of Widow's Bay, and I sure hope I'm not supposed to find anyone likeable so far. ("Likeable characters" is not a requirement for me to enjoy a show, but it sure does help.) We know the new season of Silo has started up, so hopefully we'll get to the season premiere sometime this coming week.Weathering: The heat wave seems to have broken here. It's still hot in the forecast, but much more reasonably so.
Eating: It was a couple weeks ago now, but we ordered from bb.q Chicken again with Kas and I need to report that the "Cheesling" chicken (which the website just describes as "Dusted in a rich medley of sweet cheeses", but I think the order link mentioned mascarpone and cheddar) and it was so good.
More recently, we tried haskap berries for the first time! This particular pint of them, at least, were a lot like significantly-tart blueberries; I don't feel a burning need to have them again when I could just get blueberries, but I enjoyed them.
Yesterday we bought a pint of Shaker Lemon ice cream made by a local creamery and ate it with the strawberries we brought home. (I had to look up what "Shaker Lemon" actually means, and the first hits I saw were all about pie, but I assume it's the same principle of "made with entire lemons, other than the seeds".) (Also, I know we had this ice cream once before, in a summer when we got both it and the lemon ice cream on offer from another local creamery, but all I could remember was that the two were very different, and this one was available, so we clearly had to retry it For Science.)
Buzzed hair | Lettuce!
Jul. 3rd, 2026 01:32 pmumadoshiEarlier in the week I went ahead and got scruloose to give me a buzz cut and it feels so much better. Just in time for a heat wave, even, although the heat's not as bad here as it is in a lot of other places--a horrifying thing to say when it's currently 31°C out with a humidex of 39°C. (Personally speaking, I'm indoors nearly all the time anyway, and the heat pump is keeping it cool, but scruloose is cycling to work as usual. o_o)
On the garden front, at least a couple of the tomato plants are starting to show blossoms. Would they be further along if we hadn't moved them to a spot with less direct sunlight? (Long story; not ideal; not our idea.) Dunno.
The lettuces are doing well, though! We've now eaten multiple salads from the planter, mostly via the route of taking the largest leaves from a bunch of different plants at once, rather than the "cut and come again" method of entirely cutting a at the base and leaving it to grow back again basically from scratch. So far the plants all seem to still be growing new leaves. We also just planted a second round of seeds of just a couple varieties (Freckles and Butterhead Brighton) last weekend, and by midweek they'd already visibly sprouted.
We have three or four spinach plants, only one of which is doing any substantial growing, so I don't think we can call that a raging success. And it's too soon to really have any idea about the couple of cabbages we planted. But hey, lettuce!
scruloose to give me a buzz cut and it feels so much better. Just in time for a heat wave, even, although the heat's not as bad here as it is in a lot of other places--a horrifying thing to say when it's currently 31°C out with a humidex of 39°C. (Personally speaking, I'm indoors nearly all the time anyway, and the heat pump is keeping it cool, but scruloose is cycling to work as usual. o_o)On the garden front, at least a couple of the tomato plants are starting to show blossoms. Would they be further along if we hadn't moved them to a spot with less direct sunlight? (Long story; not ideal; not our idea.) Dunno.
The lettuces are doing well, though! We've now eaten multiple salads from the planter, mostly via the route of taking the largest leaves from a bunch of different plants at once, rather than the "cut and come again" method of entirely cutting a at the base and leaving it to grow back again basically from scratch. So far the plants all seem to still be growing new leaves. We also just planted a second round of seeds of just a couple varieties (Freckles and Butterhead Brighton) last weekend, and by midweek they'd already visibly sprouted.
We have three or four spinach plants, only one of which is doing any substantial growing, so I don't think we can call that a raging success. And it's too soon to really have any idea about the couple of cabbages we planted. But hey, lettuce!